Once We Were thc-2

by Kat Zhang

  The third time it happened, I sat very still, as I had both times before. Again, I was hyperaware of everything. Every breath. The brush of our clothes on our skin. A wisp of hair against our cheek.

  I wrinkled our nose. My nose, for the moment.

  The last few practices had lowered my hopes for this one, and Addie’s sudden success left me blindsided.

  Suddenly, I had the uncontrollable itch to move. I couldn’t sit here another second—I jumped to my feet. Paced the room. The bedroom door was shut, as usual. The faint noise of Nina’s television program filtered in; she never turned it up very loud.

  I stared at the door.

  I crossed over, twisted the doorknob, and swung the door open. I’d never left our bedroom before—not alone in my skin.

  Nina sat curled up on the couch, picking at the bowl of chocolate candies Emalia left on the coffee table. A small pile of bright foil wrappers lay at her feet. She glanced up as I passed, giving me a quick smile. I smiled back. She turned back to her TV show. No questions. No comment. No suspicions.

  No idea. She had no idea.

  Why should she?

  The thought made me a little sick with the wrongness of it. Here I was, without Addie, and no one knew. How could no one know? How could it not be stamped on my forehead? Shining from my eyes?

  I had the sudden urge to eat one of Emalia’s chocolates. See if it still tasted the same with Addie gone. Was sugar as sweet? Sweeter? But I made myself continue onward, toward the front door. With every step, a new feeling started to overwhelm the initial wrongness, the initial sickness in my stomach. A new, dizzy, giddy feeling—like being on the crest of a wave, staring at the fast-approaching shore. It swept me out into the hall, made me run up the stairs so fast I stumbled.

  I pounded on Henri’s door. It swung open. I didn’t react fast enough. Ryan caught my wrist before I accidentally hit him in the chest.

  “Eva?” he said.

  I reached up and kissed him. Crushed my mouth to his. I pulled my wrist toward me and his hand with it. He threw out his other hand to steady himself on the doorframe. My heart pounded so hard I couldn’t hear anything else. I forgot where we were, who we were. I forgot if my feet were on the ground. I felt nothing but his lips eager against mine and his fingers through my hair, against the nape of my neck. He released my wrist. Slid his hand up my arm, pushing at my sleeve. He pulled me closer, his back against the doorframe, supporting both of us.

  I had to pause for breath, and in that beat of space, Ryan managed to say, “What about Addie?”

  “Gone,” I said. “Devon?”

  He laughed softly in the back of his throat. “Gone.”

  So I kissed him again. Because I wanted to. And I could. The giddiness was back, stronger. I laughed, and Ryan eased away, looking down at me.

  “What?” He was smiling.

  But so many weeks of waiting, of wanting, of thinking and hoping and daydreaming were catching up to me. Then he was laughing, too, shaking his head, the edge of his hand pressing against his forehead. A woman coming down the hallway gave us a nonplussed look, which only set us off harder.

  I loved this. Laughing. Smiling. Kissing Ryan.

  In that moment, I believed if I could spend the rest of my life laughing, smiling, and kissing Ryan, things would be just fine.

  Addie slipped back into consciousness just in time to feel me slide to the ground, laughing so hard I could barely breathe.

  TWELVE

  I was standing with Nina in the kitchen that night, both of us staring into the refrigerator, when the doorbell rang. Nina hung back as I checked the peephole.

  Addie said.

  The man offered us a slight smile when I let him in, his feet not moving from the welcome mat. Summer nights in Anchoit could be windy and cold, but Emalia’s apartment was always warm. Still, Peter didn’t bother shrugging out of his jacket.

  “Is Emalia around?” he asked.

  “No.” Nina lingered by the shoe rack, a barefoot little girl next to Emalia’s rows of stiletto heels and jewel-toned flats. “We thought she’d be with you.”

  It had been a while since Addie and I had seen Peter alone like this, just a man in a room, not a man trying to lead a room. He wore a slightly ill-fitting shirt, his sleeves rolled up and his tie loose. He straightened it as he spoke.

  “We have plans, but I was supposed to meet up with her here first. She probably got held up at work.”

  I took another step back, hoping Peter would get the hint that he didn’t need to stay standing by the door. He took a few steps off the welcome mat.

  “What about you two? What’re you doing for dinner?”

  “We’ve got it handled,” I said.

  He nodded, his gaze drifting to one of Ryan’s inventions on the dining table. He’d been like this when we stayed with him, too. Absent. Not always, of course. Peter could be very, very present in a room. He could fill it up to the brim, the way he did at meetings, drawing every eye to him, grabbing every ear with his words. But when there weren’t people around to direct and sway, weren’t problems to solve and plans to make, he withdrew into his mind.

  We hadn’t even learned his second name until Jackson told us: Warren. Warren and Peter Dagnand, because they had used a fake last name since they escaped from their own institutionalized hell so many years ago.

  What Jackson hadn’t told us was how to differentiate between Peter and Warren. Everyone always addressed him as Peter at the meetings, and he’d never corrected Addie or me when we called him Peter. In fact, I couldn’t remember anyone ever saying Warren at all.

  Maybe Warren was the quieter, more reserved man in front of me now, while Peter was the leader? There was no way to know for sure, not when I had so few clues to go on.

  He and Dr. Lyanne had been born to wealth. I knew that much. He hadn’t been institutionalized until he was fourteen—not because he and Warren had managed to stay undiscovered, but because his family had thrown enough money at the problem to make it go away. Temporarily. But money and status can only do so much. The government reached out its long arm, snatching him from gilded halls and marble floors to a concrete room with bare, steel beds. Sometimes I wondered if his ease in command came from fourteen years of being the older child of a moneyed family. But maybe that had nothing to do with it. Maybe it was the experiences that came later that shaped the boy into the man.

  “Do you want something to drink or anything?” I said awkwardly. Peter’s expression softened into something like amusement, and I felt ourself flush. Of course he would think it strange for me to play host when he’d been coming to Emalia’s apartment long before I ever arrived.

  But he nodded. “Sure. Water’s fine.”

  Nina’s interest in Peter’s appearance and our conversation had waned. She didn’t follow the two of us into the kitchen, disappearing instead down the hall.

  “Actually, I did want to talk with you and Addie about something.” Peter leaned against the counter and smiled briefly when I handed him the glass of water.

  Addie said.

  Please let him say he’d found one of the children whose faces streamed through our dreams, whose expressions of deadened fear melted, waxlike, in our nightmares.

  An eternity passed as Peter took a sip of water. Then, thankfully, he set the glass down. “Eva, Anchoit isn’t the safest place to be at the moment. Not with the Powatt institution so close by. Security has gotten tighter, and there’s going to be more attention focused on the city than ever. Especially with regard to anything hybrid-related.”

  Addie and I had noticed officers in the streets, and police cars on patrol. We’d heard Sabine talk about the damage the curfew was doing to some of the businesses downtown, and the unrest growing from that. Walking through our own neighborhood, we’d heard the complaints.

  “It’s time for you guys to find more permanent homes,” Peter said. “Somewhere safer.”

>   Addie said, so forcibly the word resounded in my mind, echoing through every part of me.

  More permanent homes meant scattering us across the country. We’d never see the others again. We might not even be allowed to contact one another.

  “No,” I said, too loudly.

  Peter reached out as if he might touch our shoulder, but I jerked back. His hand dropped. “Eva, you and the others can’t stay here.” He was getting that Peter-in-charge air about him again, and our gut tied into knots.

  “What about Sabine? And Jackson and Christoph and—and Cordelia and the others? They’re here.”

  He sighed. “It’s been years since they got out, Eva. They’re less recognizable now. And they’re . . . well, they’re older than you are. You’re fourteen.”

  “Fifteen,” I said. “How old were you when you escaped?”

  His eyes flickered from ours to the countertop. I thought I saw him bite back a smile.

  “Sixteen.” His voice was gentle, and for some reason that upset me more than if he’d matched my own irritation. “And you know what I did? I found a home where I kept myself safe for the next few years.”

  “Jackson’s barely two years older than we are.” I struggled to keep from shouting. Sound traveled freely from the kitchen to the living room, and down the hall. I didn’t want Nina to hear. “And he was a lot younger when he first got here, wasn’t he? They all were, I bet. I—”

  “That was before,” Peter said. “This is now. Eva, I can find you a family to take you in. Someone who’s willing to say you’re a niece or a stepdaughter or something. Someone you can stay with until you’re old enough to be on your own. You can go back to school, go to university—”

  “I can go to school here, can’t I?” Our fingers squeezed the handle of the water pitcher. I needed somewhere to direct our frustration. “Isn’t it the same? Either way, we’re pretending!”

  “It’s more dangerous here,” Peter said. “If things escalate in the city, so close to the institution, people will start getting paranoid. They’ll start double-checking documentation. Instead of overlooking a discrepancy, a mistake in your papers, they’ll get suspicious. They’ll ask questions. Then one day, you get a knock at your door, and it’s the police come to investigate.” He leaned down. Sought our eyes. “And it’s not just yourself you’re putting in danger, Eva. Emalia—Emalia enjoys having you and Kitty with her, but she has a very important job, you understand? If she were discovered, who would help us free more children? She can’t take that risk, Eva.”

  “I don’t have to go to school, then,” I said. School, university—it all seemed so inconsequential now, anyway. What did it matter if I learned calculus, if the government could lock me up at any moment? Why did I need to study history, when our history books lied? “Addie and I can help you guys. We don’t even have to live here with Emalia.”

  We could live with Sabine. She’d said we could. We wouldn’t stay with her long-term. Just long enough to get some sort of job. Until we could afford our own place.

  Peter sighed. “Eva—”

  I cut him off. “I don’t want to hide anymore. I’ve been hiding for almost my entire life, Peter.”

  I didn’t want to lose any more people, either. Ryan. Devon. Lissa. Hally. Kitty. Nina. Jackson and Vince and all our new friends. I’d already lost my parents, my little brother. I couldn’t stand being parted from anyone else.

  Peter and I both looked up at the sound of a key turning in the lock. Peter met our eyes again. “I know,” he said. “I understand how you feel, Eva. But you’re going to have to trust me on this one. We’ll talk about it again later. It’s not something that will happen anytime soon. There are still a lot of things to consider.”

  Of course there were.

  There always were.

  Addie and I watched him cross to the dining area, wearing a new smile and touching Emalia’s arm as she came in from the hall. Our head was suddenly aching.

  I said.

  We weren’t a child anymore, to be packed up and shuttled off on a whim.

  I told Addie—and myself—fiercely.

  Addie wrapped around me, a ghostly, intangible hug. But I could feel her shaking, too.

  THIRTEEN

  The day of the speech arrived.

  We left the apartment a little earlier than normal that afternoon, but otherwise, things started out no differently than usual. Kitty and Nina barely reacted to us leaving anymore, just nodded and went back to watching television on the couch, their head sunk against Emalia’s pillows.

  I got caught in the doorway for a moment, just staring at Nina. If something happened today . . . There were so many things that could go wrong. We’d gone over most of them with Sabine and the others, but there were probably so many more that we hadn’t thought of.

  Devon and Lissa met us in the hallway. No one spoke. Our tension-lined shoulders said everything.

  Josie waited in her car, Cordelia sitting beside her in the front seat. Jackson and Christoph were taking the bus; they’d meet us near the square.

  “Ready?” Josie said as we clambered inside. The car looked ancient, the silver paint scratched off in great gashes near the bottom of our door. The handle felt strangely loose in our hand. Inside, a faint musty smell hung over the cracked upholstery.

  “Can I open the window?” I asked.

  “Sure.” She threw the car into reverse and eased out of her parking space. “Whatever you need.”

  Josie’s car ran so low to the ground that every car driving alongside us was a giant, the buses moving mountains. I wasn’t sure what time rush hour was in Anchoit, but the streets were plenty busy now. Every block crawled by.

  Finally, we reached Ducine Boulevard, which ran parallel to Lankster. Addie and I had memorized the maps Josie showed us, but the maps had done nothing to prepare us for the throngs of people lining the sidewalks. Parking took an eternity to find. Finally, Josie squeezed into a space several blocks away.

  “Is it always this crowded?” Devon asked, slamming his car door shut.

  “Depends,” Cordelia said, but her tone said no, not usually. These people were here to listen to the speech.

  Christoph and Vince were at the bus stop, exactly where they were supposed to be. We kept our distance so we weren’t one big clump of people moving through the crowd. But eyes met, and we gathered in a back alleyway about a block from the square.

  Josie glanced at her wristwatch. “We’ve got twenty minutes until they introduce Nalles. Everyone know exactly what they’re doing?” Her eyes lingered on each of our faces. Seeing who was truly ready and who wasn’t? Who would get the job done, and who might fail?

  We wouldn’t fail.

  I wouldn’t fail.

  I snuck a look at Devon. All of us were at risk today, but none more than him. No way he didn’t realize that. But his eyes, while lacking their usual boredom, didn’t betray a lick of fear or doubt.

  Josie nodded at him. “All right. You and I should start heading over to Metro Council. The rest of you can wait around a little more, or go ahead and get set up. Just make sure you’re not spotted. Remember, we meet up at Robenston once this is over.”

  Robenston Road was a good mile or two away. Far enough, we hoped, to escape the aftermath of our plans and regroup. Right now, I couldn’t think that far into the future.

  I said, more to myself than to Addie. I expected her to say, We should really be worrying about if we’ll be all right. Instead, she was quiet. The worry knifing up our insides wasn’t mine alone.

  Christoph was the one staying close to the crowd, judging the situation on the ground. He’d wanted to be a detonator and had argued with Josie about it. He’d lost. Cordelia and Lissa were headed for alleyways a short distance from the square, each carrying a firework in th
eir shoulder bags.

  Vince and I were stationed closest to the actual stage, three stories up on two separate rooftops around the perimeter of Lankster Square. The Square sat in the middle of so many buildings; the reverberating echo of each firecracker would confuse anyone trying to figure out where the noise had come from. The posters Vince and I showered down would hopefully add to the chaos.

  Addie and I were shaking. Our hands. Our legs. I’d tied up our hair in the car because it had been so stifling, but now it left us feeling exposed. I pulled the hair band free.

  Devon and Josie slipped from the alley. Josie without looking back. Devon glanced at his sister, then at Addie and me. But so quick a glance that I could read nothing in it. I watched his retreating back, our stomach tight and sick. I wanted to be with him when he stole into the building. I wanted to be his lookout when he sat down at the computer. Devon and Ryan lost sight of the rest of the world when they concentrated. Someone needed to make sure they were safe. Sabine would be there, but I wished it were me. I didn’t trust anyone else to do it.

  But I couldn’t follow them. I had my own job to finish.

  The rest of us fiddled around in the alley a few minutes longer. But no one could stay still. Finally, with grim smiles all around, we split up and went our separate ways.

  “You worried?” Vince whispered. It was just the two of us now, walking through the street. No one gave us a second glance: Not the crowd of girls in bright sundresses. Not the mother or her surly preteen boy. Not the old man with the newspaper or the young man with the sunglasses or anyone else.

  “No,” I lied.

  These were the people who would bear witness to our message. They just didn’t know it yet.

  Eventually, even Vince left us. Our rooftop was farther from the square than his, and accessible only by a metal ladder that clanked with each step. Addie and I were halfway up when we heard a roaring cheer.